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5 Reasons Why Jailbreaking Your iPhone is NOT a Good Option to Fix Your Home Button

The home button on Apple devices is notorious for leaving you in the lurch. So notorious that we had to start this website just focusing on fixing the home button. The high number of searches and the potential of getting qualified Apple device user traffic to the website was well worth the effort to monetize it one way or the other.

Some posts involving jailbreaking your Apple device to install an alternative home button recently caught our fancy so we thought that this post was in order.

To the uninitiated, there is no alternative to the home button from Apple so they venture out into alien territory to find a way to reach home and come up with the option of installing apps like Zephyr or Activator. These apps are only available for jailbroken devices via Cydia. Both Zephyr and Activator can activate gestures that let you do what the home button does, somewhat similar to the gestures option in iPads. If, in your quest to find an alternative, you too have swooped down on this option, then you might like to read on and make an informed decision. Here are 5 reasons why you need to rethink before running that jailbreak on your iPhone, iPod or iPad:

AssistiveTouch: Apple does provide an on-screen alternative to the home button - the AssistiveTouch option. Here's how to activate it: Open Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch > "On". You can find detailed instructions here

Fix it yourself!: Yes, you read that right and you don't even need a screwdriver to open up your iPhone! You can easily fix the home button using some popular tricks that work most of the times. In our hundreds of interactions with Apple device users on Twitter, we found that two fixes have an almost 99% success rate: the alcohol fix that can be found here (yes, even iPhones love Bacchus!) and the charger fix available here. For that 1% who cannot fix it using the above two tricks, the available options are to visit the Apple Genius Bar (Apple support) or a repair guy and have it replaced, live with the AssistiveTouch option, or jailbreak it and install Activator or Zephyr. There is a lot of information you can find on the Internet about the how-tos for the third option.

The Apple experience: A jailbroken device experiencecannot compare with the Apple experience considering all the features and apps that Apple offers, so it's better to go for the above alternatives if you really want the Apple experience.

Get it replaced from Apple: If your device isin warranty, then you might as well take it to the Apple Genius Bar. Apple is known for replacing faulty deviceswith new ones.

Bricking risk: Yourisk bricking your iPhone as jailbreaks can go seriously wrong if not handled well. Is it really worth the risk when alternatives are available without a jailbreak?

So, the options are all laid out and the choice is yours. We could have overlooked more benefits that you might want to add in the comments below.